ENUGU, Nigeria — Thousands of families across Nigeria’s South-East are still searching for relatives whose whereabouts remain unknown after alleged arrests, abductions and transfers by security agencies during counter-insurgency and anti-separatist operations, according to a new joint assessment attributed to the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) and the United States-based Ekwenche Research Institute and Organisation.
The organisations put the number of South-East families unable to establish whether relatives are alive or dead at not less than 6,000 for the period January 2021 to July 2026, while adding an estimated 5,000 earlier cases dating from August 2015 to December 2019.
That would bring the number of untraced civilians allegedly caught up in security operations since 2015 to about 11,000.
The figure is a grave allegation, not an independently verified government casualty or missing-persons database. Yet the central concern behind the report — prolonged detention, enforced disappearance, lack of family notification and allegations of custodial abuse — is supported by a growing body of independent documentation, court records, testimony from former detainees and official admissions.
Amnesty International’s 2025 investigation into the South-East documented arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and unlawful killings involving security forces as well as armed and criminal groups. It said hundreds had been arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared and called for independent investigations.
More troublingly, some of the most serious allegations surrounding the military detention facility at Wawa in Niger State are no longer confined to advocacy reports.
In 2026, Nigeria’s State Security Service acknowledged that Sunday Ifedi, detained for years alongside his wife, Calista Ifedi, had been wrongfully held. He was released on 16 December 2025 after a review found no connection to IPOB and was awarded N10 million in compensation. The service also confirmed that Calista had died while in custody at the Wawa facility.
That case alone gives the larger disappearance controversy a human face: a husband released after years in detention, only to learn that his wife had died in custody without the family being properly informed.
The 6,000-case allegation
According to the joint report, “not less than 6000 Igbo Land South-East families have not traced alive or dead their beloved sons and daughters of productive age-brackets who went missing in the hands of the Nigerian military officers and personnel.”
The organisations estimate that roughly 70 per cent of those cases involved people allegedly disappearing after being arrested by the military, with the remaining cases attributed to the Nigeria Police Force and the State Security Service.
Their researchers further alleged that some detainees initially arrested in the South-East were subsequently transferred to military or intelligence detention facilities outside the region, including Wawa Military Cantonment in Kainji, Niger State.
The organisations stated:
“Our researchers and investigators also made findings estimating that 20% and 10% of the abducted and disappeared victims are those who went missing in the hands of various crack squads of the Nigeria Police Force and officers and personnel of the State Security Services.”
The distinction matters.
A person who disappears during an armed confrontation is a missing casualty of conflict. A person arrested alive by the state and subsequently denied contact with family, lawyers or the courts presents an entirely different constitutional and human-rights problem.
That is the fault line at the centre of this controversy.
The 11,000 figure and the unresolved years before 2021
Intersociety and its research partners say the alleged disappearances did not begin with the intense military operations of 2021 onwards.
They claim approximately another 5,000 South-East civilians disappeared following security crackdowns associated with pro-Biafra demonstrations between August 2015 and December 2019.
Their conclusion is stark:
“All of the above indicated that no fewer than 11000 Igbo civilians of South-East origin and residency are likely to have gone missing in the hands of the country’s security forces.”
The organisations place the period covered by their overall allegation between 30 August 2015 and 31 July 2026.
There is, however, a crucial investigative qualification.
The 11,000 figure should not be presented as an established national statistic. The available public evidence does not show a centrally maintained Nigerian government database confirming that number. The significance of the report is therefore less about treating 11,000 as a proven final count and more about asking whether the Nigerian state has the records necessary to conclusively say how many people were arrested, transferred, prosecuted, released or died in custody.
That question remains unanswered.
Amnesty’s evidence gives the allegation a wider context
The allegations emerge against the backdrop of a South-East security crisis in which civilians have been caught between separatist militants, criminal gangs and state security forces.
Amnesty International reported in August 2025 that 1,844 people were killed between January 2021 and June 2023 in the South-East in violence involving protests, armed clashes, abductions, criminality, communal violence and other forms of insecurity.
Its report said security agencies, including the military and police, were implicated in unlawful killings, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and enforced disappearances. It also made clear that the violations were not attributable to one side alone, identifying IPOB/ESN and other non-state actors alongside state forces as alleged perpetrators.
Amnesty called for prompt, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into allegations against both state and non-state actors.
The Nigerian military rejected the allegations of extrajudicial killings.
Speaking shortly after Amnesty’s report, Defence Headquarters said the claims were unfounded. Director of Defence Media Operations Major-General Markus Kangye stated that “the military is not engaged in any extrajudicial killing in the southeast.”
That denial is central to any fair examination of the claims.
Nigeria’s armed forces have continued to argue that operations in the South-East are directed against violent groups and are carried out within the law. The Army has repeatedly described Operation UDO KA as an effort to protect civilians and dismantle armed networks linked by the authorities to IPOB and the Eastern Security Network.
Wawa: detention centre or accountability blind spot?
Wawa Military Cantonment has become the most contentious location in the allegations.
The facility has been used in Nigeria’s counter-terrorism detention and prosecution architecture. A 2026 legislative issue brief cited an estimated 5,000 terrorism suspects in pre-trial detention facilities across Nigeria, while noting that terrorism-related proceedings have been conducted at Wawa and in Abuja.
Government figures reported in July 2026 also indicated that Nigeria had secured 1,721 terrorism convictions since 2017, including 865 convictions from proceedings in Abuja in 2026. Earlier phases held at Wawa produced hundreds of convictions as well as hundreds of discharges, acquittals and adjourned cases.
That is important because it demonstrates that Wawa is not simply an alleged “secret” detention location with no formal relationship to the counter-terrorism justice system.
But that does not settle the human-rights question.
A separate 2026 investigation by The ICIR documented allegations from former detainees who said they were arrested by DSS operatives, taken through Abuja and eventually transferred to Wawa, where some claimed they spent years without trial. The investigation cited court filings and witness testimony alleging incommunicado detention, torture and difficulties obtaining legal access.
A Federal Capital Territory High Court judgment involving detainee Esther Egbon is particularly revealing because it records the DSS position that, after investigation, she was transferred to Wawa on 28 May 2025 and that the agency considered her a national-security threat. The court record also captures a dispute over whether lawyers and relatives had been able to obtain access.
The implication is profound: the existence of legal proceedings and intelligence detention at Wawa does not, by itself, answer whether every detainee was lawfully arrested, promptly charged, given access to counsel and allowed meaningful judicial oversight.
The Calista Ifedi case
Few cases illustrate the stakes better than that of Calista Ifedi.
Amnesty International identified Calista and her husband, Sunday Ifedi, as among people forcibly disappeared after being arrested in the South-East in 2021. A British government country-information assessment subsequently recorded that Calista died in custody at Wawa Barracks, while Sunday was released in December 2025.
The DSS later said Sunday had been cleared of ties to IPOB and compensated.
Recent reporting indicates that the service also plans to rebuild the restaurant associated with the couple as part of compensation measures.
The case is especially disturbing because the allegation against the couple was reportedly connected to their alleged association with IPOB supporters patronising their business.
An independent former detainee who shared a cell with Calista alleged that she became seriously ill while detained and did not receive adequate treatment. Those allegations cannot substitute for a forensic inquiry into the circumstances of her death, but they reinforce the demand for an official explanation and, where possible, an autopsy and disclosure of medical records.
This is precisely where a functioning justice system must move beyond competing narratives.
The question should not be whether Calista was sympathetic to IPOB.
The question is whether the state possessed lawful grounds to detain her, whether due process was followed and whether the state safeguarded her life while she was in its custody.
The Ozioma Onyeaka allegation
The joint report also highlights the case of Ozioma Elizabeth Onyeaka, whom it says was in her early twenties when she was arrested by an Army patrol team around Nsugbe near Onitsha in 2020.
The organisations claim she was subsequently moved to Wawa, where she allegedly spent more than five years.
The report describes it as:
“One of the most agonizing and pathetic cases…”
It further alleges that Onyeaka was seen in Abuja in June 2026 among detainees undergoing what the organisations characterised as secret terrorism trials, and that she was allegedly pressured to plead guilty to IPOB membership in return for freedom.
Atlantic Post has not independently established those specific claims.
They should therefore remain precisely what they are: serious allegations requiring verification, not established facts.
If Onyeaka is alive and still detained, however, the remedy is straightforward in principle: the authorities should state where she is being held, the charges against her, the court handling the matter and the legal basis for her continued detention.
If she has been released, that should be documented.
If she has died, her family deserves official confirmation and access to the circumstances and, where appropriate, remains of their relative.
Silence is not an answer.
Allegations of flawed terrorism trials
The joint report also names detainees whom it claims were subjected to flawed proceedings, including Nnabuike Romanus Erikeigwe and Ferdinand Uchenna Ede.
It alleges that Erikeigwe pleaded not guilty but was later recorded as having pleaded guilty and sentenced.
Such an allegation, if supported by court records, would raise an extraordinary question of judicial integrity.
But this is an area where journalism must resist the temptation to transform an advocacy organisation’s allegation into a concluded judicial fact.
Court records, certified proceedings, judgments and counsel’s filings are required before such claims can responsibly be described as established.
That distinction is particularly important because Nigeria has demonstrably prosecuted genuine terrorism cases through the courts.
In November 2025, Federal High Court Judge James Omotosho sentenced IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu to life imprisonment after convicting him on terrorism-related charges.
IPOB remains proscribed as a terrorist organisation under Nigerian law; the Court of Appeal affirmed that status in January 2025.
Therefore, there is a legitimate national-security basis for investigating and prosecuting people reasonably suspected of terrorism.
The dispute is over how that legitimate power is exercised.
National security cannot abolish accountability
Intersociety itself acknowledges this point.
The organisation stated:
“We acknowledge those lawful powers vested on Nigerian security forces”
but said its concern was with the “crude policies, processes and procedures adopted.”
That distinction deserves serious attention.
A state confronted by armed separatists has the right — indeed the duty — to protect its citizens. But an arrest is not a conviction. An intelligence allegation is not proof. And a terrorism label cannot lawfully become a substitute for a trial.
The Nigerian Constitution protects personal liberty and fair hearing, while Nigeria’s international obligations also require safeguards against arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearance.
The same principle applies regardless of whether the suspect is an alleged IPOB member, Boko Haram operative, bandit, criminal gang member or an ordinary citizen mistakenly swept into an operation.
A new accountability problem for Abuja
Perhaps the most consequential issue raised by the latest report is not the headline figure of 6,000.
It is the absence of a transparent public accounting system capable of resolving individual cases.
A credible national register should be able to answer basic questions:
Who was arrested?
By which agency?
Where?
On what date?
Under what legal authority?
Where was the person transferred?
Which court was notified?
When was the detainee charged?
When was the person released, acquitted, convicted or otherwise disposed of?
What happened if the detainee died?
Without such records, every unexplained disappearance becomes fertile ground for competing narratives, ethnic mistrust and allegations of state persecution.
The security establishment therefore has an opportunity to answer its critics with records rather than rhetoric.
Interestingly, the DSS under its current leadership has already begun reviewing longstanding detention cases. The service said the exercise was designed to prevent people from remaining detained when investigations no longer justified their continued custody.
That review should now be expanded and independently audited.
The South-East recruitment crisis
There is another consequence that may ultimately prove more damaging to national security.
Intersociety argues that alleged abuses have contributed to declining willingness among young people in the South-East to join the Nigerian military, police and intelligence services.
In April 2026, the organisation cited concerns within the security establishment that only 123 recruits from the South-East had been recorded out of 38,000 recruitment slots in one recruitment exercise.
Whether every element of Intersociety’s interpretation is accepted or not, the underlying strategic issue is obvious.
A military that struggles to attract recruits from a significant part of the federation faces more than a public-relations problem.
It faces a national-integration problem.
People are much more likely to trust security institutions when they see those institutions as belonging to them, protecting them and operating according to rules that apply equally to everyone.
What the Federal Government should do
The strongest response to the allegations would not be another denial.
It would be disclosure.
The Federal Government should establish an independent judicial commission with authority to obtain detention registers, interrogation records, transfer orders, medical records and court files from the military, DSS and police.
It should identify every person alleged to have disappeared in custody since 2015 and publish a case-by-case status report, subject to legitimate national-security limitations.
Every detainee still held should either be charged before a competent court or released in accordance with the law.
Families should be notified when relatives are transferred between facilities, and lawyers should be granted lawful access.
Where deaths in custody occurred, the circumstances should be independently investigated.
And where security personnel are found to have violated the law, prosecution should follow.
The government should also invite the National Human Rights Commission and credible independent observers to participate in detention monitoring.
That would strengthen rather than weaken national security.
The real question: where are they?
The South-East does have a security crisis.
IPOB has been legally proscribed. Violent separatist-linked actors and criminal groups have killed civilians and security personnel. Nigerian forces therefore have a legitimate duty to confront armed violence.
But legitimate counter-terrorism operations cannot become a permission slip for indefinite detention or disappearance.
The latest report raises the possibility that thousands of families may have lived for years in an agonising state of uncertainty — unable to bury a loved one, visit a prisoner, instruct a lawyer or even establish whether a son, daughter, husband or wife is still alive.
That is why the alleged 6,000 cases since 2021 and 11,000 since 2015 demand something more powerful than political argument.
They demand a records-based investigation.
The Nigerian state should either demonstrate where these people are, what happened to them and why they were detained — or admit that its own detention and transfer systems have failed to account for them.
In a constitutional democracy, the whereabouts of a citizen held by the state cannot become a state secret indefinitely.
For the families still searching, the ultimate question remains brutally simple: are their relatives alive, in detention, released, convicted or dead?
After years of silence, the Nigerian government owes them an answer.
SEO Title6,000 South-East Families Still Search for Missing RelativesSEO DescriptionIntersociety alleges 6,000 South-East families cannot trace relatives detained or missing in security operations, reviving questions over Wawa and due process.Captivating Excerpt
For thousands of South-East families, an arrest may have been the last moment they ever saw a son, daughter, husband or wife. A new Intersociety-Ekwenche report alleges that more than 6,000 families still cannot establish whether relatives taken during security operations are alive or dead, while documented cases involving Wawa detention facility show that at least some of the allegations demand urgent answers.
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